(02-18-2015, 02:04 PM)ookpik Wrote: Thanks for the number but note that that's an upper bound. The snow removal service has to make a trip to your 40' section. That takes time, labour, gasoline, etc. It's probably much more costly to the service than the cost of spending 10 seconds to clear your sidewalk. It should be a lot cheaper if the city sends out plows to do everyone's sidewalks. My guess would be that a blanket clearing of all sidewalks would cost 10% or 20% of that.
You asked about costs that (some) property owners are currently paying for private service, because that is a part of the cost of the current system that the Record op-ed missed. I wasn't trying to insinuate that public costs would be similar to this- I was saying that this would be the savings that some property owners would experience if the work were taken on by the municipal government. It's clear that the municipality would have all kinds of efficiency advantages over private companies that might have only a handful of contracts in any given neighbourhood.